In a "spiritual gifts" test I took a few years ago, I found out that my gift was administration. I was a tad disappointed, I actually preferred something a little more sensational. However, God's wisdom is incredible and His foreknowledge of what I would need to run my family successfully was put in me before I was even born.
I have been a manager, administrator and/or a corporate Executive assistant in the career world for the past 15 years or so. That experience, plus my certification at Harvard (for free, mind you) has put me in the place where God has given me the tools necessary to run an orderly ship with structure, balance and grace. The lady in the picture is smiling, not because she has to handle all that she does...she is smiling because she CAN handle all the she does. She may be tired sometimes or may delegate an assigment here or there. She is not lazy, she is strong and a hard worker just like the "lady' in Proverbs 31. One of my mentors is a very wealthy, incredibly successful pastor who runs a successful publishing company and cosmetics business. She is the co-pastor (with her husband) of her church, a wife, mother, author of over 10 books and has her children in business for themselves. She told me that "laziness is defined as the monumental effort it takes to refuse to inconvenience yourself." Watching her success and the cohesiveness of her family, I have decided that my family is worth a little inconvenience.
So, simple things that I do in the workforce I use now to solve issues at home. For example, my husband and I were shuffling appointments, events, rehearsals and meetings with the other person finding out at the last minute or after the fact, what was going on. So now, we have a Monday morning-mini debrief over the phone (we are both at our separate offices)where I type out the schedule for the week and discuss it with him. I send him a copy of it via e-mail and he can add anything that was forgotten and send it back. This way we both see what is going on ahead of time. It also allows us to plan better. One week, I sent the schedule over and my husband saw that we were out almost every evening during the week, so he canceled an event that the two of us had so we could be home instead. Had we not seen the whole week at a glance, we may not have even noticed that we were gone so much.
We have cut our busyness down some, but we may still have some more decisions to make. I never want to be the type of mom that I have to hire 20 people to the things for my husband and my family that I want to do. No, its not always convenient-but its my job and other things can wait. I mean if I don't have an hour to do my daughters' hair or clean my own husband's underwear then doggone it I am just WAY too busy. I am all for calling in some help if you need it on occasion. But my family is my "company" and my priority. I never, ever want to be too busy to serve them. Some of the best memories of my childhood was getting my hair done by my mom or talking to her while she ironed and starched my dad's shirts. I wouldn't trade those teachable moments for anything.
I am the Chief Operating Officer and my husband is the CEO. We have God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the Board of Directors and our children are all Executive VP's of their world. My part of the success of our company rest on the ability to take the vision of the CEO, market it, structure it and make it happen. Sure I would love have an Oscar or a pulitizer prize one day...but one the best rewards of all will be hearing my kids tell their kids that..."My mom/stepmom rocked, she was always there for me, She took good personal care of my stepdad/dad and she ran our house with grace, love and constantly running vacumn cleaner."
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